Back in... tennis

I had a bit of haitus there, although I've still been following the tennis. I don't know, the demands of real life got the better of me and blogging seemed hard. But here I am, still obsessing quietly about tennis.

The US Open is nearly upon us. Rafa's going to be at Arthur Ashe kids day again, along with Novak, Mandy Murray, Serena and Maria Sharapova.

I'm sorry, Mandy. Andy. I'm sure you hate being called that. Andy says he feels no pressure to win his first slam. He points out it took Roger 17 tries to win his first, and that Andy is now on his fifteenth attempt.

17 is an exceptionally large number of attempts, I think, and seems perculiar to Roger's relatively slow development as a player. Novak won the AO on his eighth slam attempt, Rafa won the French Open on his sixth attempt at a slam, Sampras won the US Open after his eighth. I'm sure there are similar figures for other players if I could be bothered to track them down, and I saw this exact discussion once, somewhere. I think, yeah, 17 attempts is quite a lot.

I don't honestly know how significant this sort of speculation is, but Mandy does seem to be made in the same mould as Roger as a player, even down to the attempts to control their negative emotions on court. Mandy Murray - late developer who's going to dominate tennis for years to come, or someone who's never going to quite make it?

I want Rafa to win the US Open and get a career slam. That's my ideal outcome in my perfect world of awesome. After that, I want Roger to win his sixth, because that kind of thing is addictive. After that... well, okay Mandy! It's your turn.

Um. Here's a relevant picture to go with all this.

Pic taken by Cinci - vamosbrigade.com